A driver condition determination device determines whether a driver of a host vehicle has degraded consciousness. A main component for distribution of an accelerating operation condition with respect to proximity when tailgating a preceding vehicle is analyzed (S16), all data is origin-shifted (S18), and the accelerating operation condition of the driver when the driver has consciousness is created as a normal traveling model (S20). The likelihood of the accelerating operation condition, a likelihood average, a likelihood variance, and a likelihood threshold value are calculated (S22 to S26), and it is determined whether the likelihood of a current driving operation is lower than the likelihood threshold value (S28). When the likelihood is lower than the likelihood threshold value, the driver is determined as being in degraded consciousness. Since the likelihood threshold value is calculated for determination on the basis of data when the driver has consciousness, an erroneous determination of degraded consciousness due to difference in driver operation characteristics is suppressed.
Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
1. A driver condition determination device that determines whether a driver of a vehicle has degraded consciousness, comprising: a proximity calculating section that calculates the proximity to a preceding vehicle positioned in front of the vehicle, using a proximity sense indicator that is an indicator that indicates a sense of proximity of the vehicle to the preceding vehicle; an operation condition detecting section that detects an accelerating operation condition of the driver corresponding to the proximity of the vehicle to the preceding vehicle; and a degraded consciousness determining section that determines that the driver has the degraded consciousness when a gap between the accelerating operation condition of the driver detected by the operation condition detecting section and a normal accelerating operation condition exceeds a preset value, wherein the proximity sense indicator is calculated by the following Expression PRE =(Vr +α. Vs +β·Ax)/D n and PRE represents the proximity sense indicator, Vr represents the relative speed of the host vehicle with respect to the preceding vehicle, Vs represents the vehicle speed of the host vehicle, Ax represents the relative acceleration of the host vehicle with respect to the preceding vehicle, D represents the inter-vehicle distance between the host vehicle and the preceding vehicle, Gt and 13 are predetermined coefficients, and n is a predetermined positive real number of 1 or less.
2. The driver condition determination device according to claim 1 , further comprising: a likelihood calculating section that calculates the likelihood of the accelerating operation condition of the driver and the preset value as a likelihood threshold value on the basis of the proximity to the preceding vehicle and a distribution state of the accelerating operation condition, wherein the degraded consciousness determining section determines that the driver has the degraded consciousness when the likelihood of the accelerating operation condition of the driver is lower than the likelihood threshold value.
3. The driver condition determination device according to claim 2 , wherein the likelihood calculating section calculates the likelihood and the likelihood threshold value using a mixed normal distribution.
Cooperative Patent Classification codes for this invention. Click any code to explore related patents in that topic.
April 23, 2012
June 23, 2015
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